Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective
Tate Modern, until 3 May
Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World
Tate Modern, until 16 May
Arshile Gorky (1904–48) was a great and versatile painter, either the last major surrealist or the first Abstract Expressionist. In truth, he was a bit of each, an Armenian who fled to America where he became a focus of European influence and an innovator of considerable potency. André Breton called him ‘the eye-spring’, and wrote:
Gorky had the extreme sensitivity to be such a conducting wire, but his brief career was cut short by tragedy — a studio fire, cancer, a broken neck sustained in a car accident — and he committed suicide aged just 44.
I often wish that single-artist exhibitions catapulted the visitor right into the heart of the artist’s achievement, rather than insisting on the chronological approach.
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